The Feminine Mystique and The Female Eunuch spoke to those women for a reason. (And both have value in being read today, just so you can understand how historically close we are to that uniquely crappy situation - a gilded cage is still a cage - and one that hides a lot of abuse)
Yes, I would say that the top 10 rated players are probably millionaires (through tournament prize money, appearance fees, playing for sponsored teams e.g. the Bundesliga (German National Chess League.)
However there is no comparable depth in chess earnings to sports like golf or tennis.
You can earn a living through writing a chess column or doing chess coaching, but you won’t get rich on that.
Now the top ranks of of chess players are Grandmasters / International Masters / FIDE Masters.
I remember long ago meeting the current British Chess Champion (an International Master), who asked if I could buy him a meal. 
I obliged (and saved him face by getting a chess lesson in return.)
Similarly in the last round of an international tournament in Switzerland, I played a Russian International Master.
It was a good game (I lost 
), but after we analysed the game we compared our circumstances.
I was a full-time computer programmer, staying in a 4 star hotel.
He had travelled from Moscow by car with two friends … and was sleeping in the car. 
I was eating out (or in the hotel); he and his friends were living on sandwiches they made themselves.
There are a couple of grandmasters who do that staring (though I agree it’s rare.)
Sometimes, in a game lasting hours, you just want to give your brain a change.
I’m already breaking out the popcorn. Thanks!
As for being a good friend, you can’t always know how the other person will treat you. Mr Shaibel couldn’t have known Beth wouldn’t repay him, for example. As for her being a white girl, I didn’t get this at all. I suppose this could have been a theme in a differently told story, but this series isn’t about any kind of special privilege that I could see. I see these reasons, for a few characters:
Mr Shaibel: lonely “invisible” janitor finds a way to share his passion in life with someone, and help a young orphan through an unfortunate time
Jolene: knows through experience what it’s like to live in an orphanage, and is kind-hearted enough to help out a fellow orphan
Harry Beltik: to me, obviously the one man in the series that unquestionably loves Beth. Whether it was love at first sight, of course he would want to be near her after first meeting her.
Benny Watts: has total passion for chess, unlike Harry. He is interested in helping Beth to become a better chess player, because he recognizes her talent and is fascinated by it
Alma Wheatley: for me her motivations at first weren’t clear. Possbily needed a diversion from a loney existence and not so much a child to care for. But changes as she gets to know Beth, and her own kind of passion for life starts to develop.
Great show, but I liked it better the first time, when it was called “The Hustler”
In both shows we had a young person from a poor background but with an incredible skill at a game, blowing through all the competition but with eyes on playing the best player in the world. When the hero finally gets the chance to play the best in the world, internal demons cause self-sabotage, and the hero loses.
Hero then goes away, wrestles with demons, then loses a broken woman who had dreams but was beaten fown by bad men and a bad life and dies an alcoholic.
Finally, the hero gets thrir act together, practices like crazy, gives up booze and pills, and has a triumphant rematch with the best in ghe world.
That pretty much describes the plot of both movies. Both written by Walter Tevis. The Piper Laurie character in ‘The Hustler’ was eerily similar to Beth’s Mom.
Even the training montages and the way the games were shot in rapid succession felt a lot like The Hustler and The Color of Money.
Still, a great series.
Was this made clear, because I thought she did?
Yes. She told that to Jolene.
Others have mentioned the final scene where she’s playing for fun against the dedicated and enthusaistic amateurs in park, and how she’s finally fulfilled her dreams and reached the pinnacle of her career. Note what she was wearing - all white, with a close-fitting high-collared coat that flared at the hips, and a hat with a white bobble on the top. She looks exactly like the White Queen chess piece - it’s most obvious when she gets out of the car and strides down the street. She’s clearly the queen of the chess world now, and the Moscow players at this moment are her adoring subjects.
I loved the costuming in this series.
People do like helping one another, though. That is very common behaviour. In a few cases it’s undoubtedly that, like I said, she looks like Anya Taylor-Joy (most specifically Benny and the guy who lived with her for awhile) but an older girl helping a younger girl in the bathroom witha period emergency is not unusual, and little bits of help are just what we do as humans.
When I teach people how to perform quality audits, one of the things I teach in interview technique is that when you need to ask someone questions, try to lead with a question along the lines of “I was wondering if you could help me…” It’s amazing how effective that is.
That and the set design were genuinely outstanding. It never fails to amaze me, when that stuff is done right, how remarkable it is.
Costume and set designers are unsung heroes of film and TV. The effect of good work in those departments is twofold - it supports the narrative, as in the example you cite. It also immerses the viewer in the time and setting, and the work involved in that is unreal. Imagine having to set up an entire house only using things the look as if they fit the world of 1962. Even granting that studios have warehouses full of this stuff, it’s not easy.
And in the first episode, the first time we see young Beth Harmon standing near the car wreck with her dead mother, she’s dressed as a white pawn. As you know, a pawn starts on one end of the board and if it can move up seven squares it gets promoted to a queen. How many episodes were in the series? Seven. The story was very much about Beth’s journey from one end of the chess board to the other and her promotion from pawn to queen.
A pawn makes 5 or 6 moves, not 7
People do like helping one another. Funny though they like helping one another a lot more when the other looks like Anya Taylor-Joy. And that doesn’t only apply those with reactions of lust.
Imagine the story with the brilliant but disturbed mind being housed in Jolene, more so a less attractive Jolene. At each step how many of the times that others helped do you think they still would have? Heck even after the theft of the chess magazine! Looking like Anya Taylor-Joy had people overlooking lots else.
Including starting and ending squares, a pawn will traverse seven squares
I’m bad for not being able to suspend disbelief when watching shows. But for Queen’s Gambit there was almost none of that and I binge watched in two days. A couple of things caught my attention - the lack of southern accents, and the end were Beth gets out of the car and goes for a walk in the middle of Moscow without her CIA handlers doing anything… but I can forgive that as it’s a wonderful apotheosis of Beth’s journey.
The square you start on is not a move. The pawn moves 5 or 6 times to become a queen.
Sometimes a cigar is just …
But the square you start on is the first episode. The piece then moves 6 times - through six more episodes - for a total 7 eps. Or at least, that’s what makes sense to me.
Exactly. “Move up” probably isn’t the right phrase for it, but I’m struggling to come up with the right terminology for it in English. The pawn touches exactly seven squares. Even if you look at the first usually double move, the pawn can’t do it unless the square in front is clear. Hence you can consider it to have walked through and touched that space. If the pawn takes a piece, it’s still only one square in front diagonally.
To spell it out in excruciating detail: Let’s say you begin as the queen’s pawn on square d2.
Episode 1: Pawn begins on d2
Episode 2: Pawn moves to (or through) d3
Episode 3: Pawn moves to d4
Episode 4: Pawn moves to d5
Episode 5: Pawn moves to d6
Episode 6: Pawn moves to d7
Episode 7: Pawn moves to d8 and is promoted to queen
Hey, look, it works out!
No point hijacking the thread on this, though; the pawn movement metaphor is best mentioned only in passing.
I see what you did there en passant.
But is anyone surprised that a simple miscommunication gets blown up out of proportion on the sdmb? The pawn moves through the 7 ranks of the board. Doesn’t matter if you start e3 or e4, it’s a tough journey.